Danny ChaiI actually really enjoy all those pseudo-Christian bands out there nowadays. Switchfoot, Lifehouse, The Fray, OneRepublic (SN. Have you ever heard the original version of Apologize? The Timbaland version is about 1000 times better), Mute Math; I like them all. Love, even.
“I would say that no player that ever played for him would not say he did not come out a stronger person.” – John Wooden, on Bobby Knight’s retirement. It took me a while to parse that sentence, and I’m still not sure I did it correctly.
I was taken aback by how happy I was about the Super Bowl, because I didn’t like either of the teams; my happiness was driven by my hatred of the Patriots. And that disturbed me a bit. But when I sat down and thought about it, my feelings are more driven by my love of the 49ers. There’s been way too much talk about whether Brady is better than Montana, and it drove us Niner fans crazy, I think. So my happiness comes from the fact that Montana is now indisputably the best Super Bowl quarterback ever.
So I voted this morning. I prefer voting in person; I like the process of it, and wearing the “I Voted” sticker afterwards. One weird thing – in the November elections (which were purely local), they used touchscreens that also printed out a record of your vote on a little receipt-like thing. Today, paper ballots only. Also, there were approximately 30 times more people there than for the November elections, which makes sense, but ironically, I think my vote made more of a difference in the local elections, since few people voted.
I don’t know if you know this, but Sunnyvale’s city government is kind of absurd. For example, we don’t vote for a mayor. We only vote for members of the city council; the position of mayor is rotated between council members every two years, something like that. It’s like something a small town would do, but Sunnyvale is the 2nd biggest city in Silicon Valley.
Anyway, about a year ago, the Sunnyvale City Council voted to grant itself lifetime health insurance. That is, anyone who has ever served on the city council receives health insurance for life, paid for by the city. I’m completely against this on many, many grounds, but what bothered me the most was the process by which it happened – on the day it came up to vote, there was almost no public discussion about it. It was raised and quickly approved. And that’s what galls me. It’s the same problem we have with corporate boards; because of the dilution of share ownership and the unwillingness of large funds to be more active in overseeing corporate governance, boards are enabled to give themselves and executives ever increasing compensation without any real accountability. Those in power win; everyone else loses.
Except there is accountability with the city council – my vote. So since the insurance thing, I vowed that I would vote for every reasonably qualified opponent of any city council member who voted for the health insurance benefit. In the last election, there was only one such candidate, David Whittum, and he defeated the incumbent and former mayor Dean Chu by just a few hundred votes. That was highly satisfying; it felt like my vote made a difference.
Plus, he shares my outrage over the health thing. Here’s a response in an interview with the Palo Alto Daily News:
Q: Do you support rescinding the lifetime health care benefit for current council members?
A: Yes, immediately on taking office. In addition, I am willing to eliminate immediately health benefits for serving council members, if this is necessary to overcome unforeseen bureaucratic obstacles involved in the elimination of the post-service benefit.
I can’t imagine that interested anyone, especially outside of Sunnyvale.